We've been critical of many individual nonprofits, and some are over-funded, wasteful, and of dubious value. But overall, as labor activist Robert Haaland told us: "The fact that an individual nonprofit isn't performing up to standard doesn't mean that the services aren't needed."

And there are many who say the San Francisco model is, in fact, a national standard. Margaret Brodkin, former director of the Mayor's Office for Children, Youth, and Families, helped develop the current system of nonprofit accountability in that office. She has been invited to speak all over the country about the standards and data system they developed. "Others have replicated the data system we had in place. It's held up as a national model, the data system as well as the standards," she explained.

So it's not so simple — and to use a few anecdotes and some inaccurate and misleading figures to call San Francisco the worst managed city in the nation is, well, a bit of a stretch. To say the least.